History of 3D printing

Who invented 3D Printing? In May 1981, Dr Hideo Kodama at the Nagoya Municipal Industrial Research Institute published details concerning a ‘rapid prototyping‘ technique. This research was the first piece of literature to describe the layer-by-layer approach so intrinsic to 3D printing. His research involved printing photopolymers using a method which preceded stereolithography, and also spoke about cross-sectional slices of layers which lay on top of each other to form the 3D object. However, Dr Kodama didn’t fulfil the patent application before his deadline and was never granted the patent. Before this however, there were rumblings and references made to a stereolithography-like process in earlier research paper dating back to the 60s and 70s, and in a 1974 New Scientist column, David Jones, writing under the name Daedalus, actually published a satirical piece that jokingly described the SLA process. “He basically invented stereolithography with a laser, and invented it as a joke.